Pushing change is not for the faint of heart or head. Loneliness is one of side effects that innovators must consider. A wise man once told me: No one welcomes change except wet babies Whether it’s through some form of behavioural intervention, using evaluation data to point out strengths and weaknesses in a program, or …
Knowledge translation — and its affiliated terms knowledge exchange, knowledge integration and knowledge mobilization — was coined to describe a process of taking what is known into what is done in health across the spectrum of science, practice, policy and  the public’s health. As health issues become more complex due to the intertwining of demographics, …
Is Knowledge Translation In Health Too Important to Leave to Health Professionals? Read More »
Marketing is largely about identity and stories about identity. Marketers want to influence what you do (choose, use, purchase, etc..) and how you experience what you do when you do it. To do this, they know the importance of design and the stories to accompany that design. Design, when done well, is partly about creating empathy with those who are to benefit from the products of design and the best products out there are ones that apply empathy and guide behaviour at the same time. Storytelling is the vehicle that links them together.
Complexity, by its very nature, is not a simple concept to communicate, yet it is increasingly becoming one that will define our times and may be the key to ensuring human survival and wellbeing in the years to come. If society is to respond to complex challenges the meaning of complexity needs to be communicated …
Powerful social network research is as much about having a good statistician as it is an anthropologist and together, they need to have the story that comes from it, woven together by the users.
Metaphors and analogies are commonly used in systems thinking and complexity science to illustrate concepts that are, on their own, relatively complex and awkward to describe literally. A campfire provides both a metaphor for bringing people together, but also a literal tool that could be used more effectively in work with groups struggling to innovate, collaborate and contemplate together. From a design perspective, campfires and the social system that they create around them provide an opportunity to enhance intimacy quickly, allowing for the potential to explore issues in ways that are more difficult to do in other settings.
I teach a class in systems thinking perspectives on public health. This past week we discussed the role of narratives and storytelling as ways to learn about systems and how to organize diverse information and make sense of that. All stories are fiction, but for systems thinkers, some stories are useful.
Our tweets and Facebook posts provide us with new ways to tell stories that can be as rich as traditional methods. By viewing these narrative fragments in context, we can learn a lot about our world and the way that we communicate.
Books may be low tech compared to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, but its focus on narrative gives it an advantage over other tools. Some thoughts on how to keep a low tech tool useful in a high tech information environment
